BEAUTY QUEEN

A BEAUTY queen set to take part in the Miss Great Britain Final today tells of the terrifying night her uncle killed her abusive father as she and her three frightened siblings cowered upstairs in bed.

- BY EMMELINE SAUNDERS

Marcie Reid - believed to be the first contestant to have been brought up in care - was three years old and living with her birth family trembling under the violent rule of her bullying father Graham Binks.

Now she is speaking out about that chilling night to show the world that she hasn't let her traumatic childhood define her future.

Marcie, 30, recalls: "My only memories of my father were of raised voices and being scared. I remember having to crawl under the TV - you couldn't walk in front of it while he was watching. Little things like that."

Former security guard Binks would regularly beat her mum Shirley black and blue - breaking her jaw in one attack at their home in Croxley Green, Herts. The dad-of-four once told his wife to get an abortion when they found out she was pregnant.

Seventeen stone Binks had also beaten up his father-in-law and Shirley's younger brother.

Argument

But one night in January 1998, everything changed. As Marcie and her siblings were huddled in bed together, a fight raged downstairs between Binks and his brother-in-law who had been out drinking.

Binks woke his wife up to pick a drunken argument with her and bit her on the arm. She went downstairs to ask her brother why Binks was in such a bad mood. A fight broke out between the men, and Shirley fled to the hallway. Binks stabbed Marcie's uncle with a screwdriver - but he hadn't realised his brother-in-law had stashed a seven-inch carving knife in the back pocket of his trousers.